Environmentalism in Religious Orders: Interpretation, Assessments and Negotiations as Sub-processes of Glocalization

Jiska Gojowczyk

Different people often use the same word, but mean something different. This becomes problematic when people want to act collectively. This project investigates such situations within Catholic religious orders and asks how the religious interpret their shared environmental goals and how they assess and negotiate differences. In this way, seemingly everyday problems, and how they are overcome, turn out to be highly relevant events: Will a protest against an influential industry sector to protect indigenous peoples and old-growth forests be heard? Should 3 million students in Jesuit schools be taught to recycle? Can the world’s 17,000 jet-setting Jesuits compensate for their CO2 emissions through their own reforestation program? Following up on a dissertation project completed in the spring of 2017, this project examines the micro-sociological processes by which members of transnational religious communities recontextualize shared "global" environmental goals. This project will contribute to our understanding of normative orders as the basis of economic activities and reshape how we think about them as a force for change. Project duration: May 2017 to January 2019.